Rainbow Puzzles and Word Search Printable

The seven colors, how a rainbow forms and where to look for one, on a sheet with its answer key.

Name Date

Rainbow Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

ZNDTANNEWOIPHHB

NRGMETGNFKBWPCP

OPRISMNKNIRMIUI

JHESKYHBINACOVO

YVETUBRAADIDAIN

CTNSRAARAINDROP

RMXGZGXRIGBDCLP

JEDOOLGOWOOOTEH

EFRLNYELLOWUDTE

LDTDEORANGEBASR

KHOCDTEHNATLFTD

LEXWMNDAGBSERHU

OVPIMBRDLLTDMUY

JAASPECTRUMQNUQ

EOBRLMIJHEDDATS

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

RainbowRAINBOW
RedRED
OrangeORANGE
YellowYELLOW
GreenGREEN
BlueBLUE
IndigoINDIGO
VioletVIOLET
PrismPRISM
RaindropRAINDROP
ArcARC
MistMIST
SpectrumSPECTRUM
DoubleDOUBLE
GoldGOLD
SkySKY

16 of 22 words from the Rainbow Favorites list.

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Word list

Large print Lower-case letters Name and date line on paper

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Answer key: Rainbow Word Search

ZNDTANNEWOIPHHB

NRGMETGNFKBWPCP

OPRISMNKNIRMIUI

JHESKYHBINACOVO

YVETUBRAADIDAIN

CTNSRAARAINDROP

RMXGZGXRIGBDCLP

JEDOOLGOWOOOTEH

EFRLNYELLOWUDTE

LDTDEORANGEBASR

KHOCDTEHNATLFTD

LEXWMNDAGBSERHU

OVPIMBRDLLTDMUY

JAASPECTRUMQNUQ

EOBRLMIJHEDDATS

RAINBOW, RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, INDIGO, VIOLET, PRISM, RAINDROP, ARC, MIST, SPECTRUM, DOUBLE, GOLD, SKY

Next step Make a puzzle from your own rainbow words Scramble the same rainbow words

All 91 words

Colors of the Rainbow 17

Band One curved stripe of color in the bow.
Blend What the colors do into one another; the neat separate stripes are partly a trick of human eyesight.
Blue Its light is bent more sharply than red light on the way into a raindrop.
Five The number of main colors Newton named at first, in 1672, before he added orange and indigo.
Green The middle color of the seven, between yellow and blue.
Indigo The color between blue and violet in Newton's list of seven; its name comes from an ancient dye.
Inner Violet runs along this side of the main bow, the side nearer its center.
Orange The second color from the outside, and one of two that Newton added to his first list of five.
Outer The edge of the main bow where red appears.
Red The color on the outer edge of the main bow; its light is bent the least.
Reverse The order of the colors in the second bow of a double rainbow, with red on the lower side.
Roy G. Biv A made-up name whose seven letters stand for the colors in order, from red to violet.
Scale Newton settled on seven colors because a musical one has seven notes.
Seven The number of colors in Newton's final list, which he matched to the notes of a musical scale.
Spectrum The whole spread of colors in light, each one blending into the next.
Violet The color on the inner edge of the main bow.
Yellow The third color from the outside, between orange and green.

Show all 91 words (74 more)

How a Rainbow Forms 21

Angle The main bow shines at one of about 42 degrees from the point opposite the Sun.
Beam Newton let a narrow one of sunlight strike a glass prism, and it came out as bands of different colors.
Bend What a ray of sunlight does twice in a drop: once going in and once coming out.
Bounce What light does off the inside back of a drop of water.
Degrees The units used to measure the angle of a rainbow; the main bow is about 42 of them from its center.
Dispersion The effect that fans white light out into colors: each color is bent by its own amount.
Droplet A tiny bead of water; the smaller it is, the paler the bow it makes.
Eyes Each of your two sees its own rainbow; the brain joins them into one.
Infrared A rainbow has a band of this unseen light beyond its red edge.
Mirror The back of a raindrop acts a little like one, sending some of the light back.
Observer The person looking; no two of them ever see exactly the same rainbow.
Optics The science of light; Newton's book on it described his work with prisms.
Prism A clear block with flat, angled sides; white light goes in and a fan of colors comes out.
Raindrop Sunlight bends as it enters one, bounces off the back and bends again on the way out.
Reflection The bouncing of light off the back of a drop, which sends it toward the viewer.
Refraction The change in direction of light when it crosses from air into a drop of water.
Shadow The center of a rainbow's circle lies in the direction of the one your own head casts.
Sphere The ball shape of a raindrop, which scatters light into a round disc in the sky.
Sunshine It looks white, but Newton showed that it holds every color of the rainbow.
Ultraviolet Light that lies just past the violet edge; human eyes cannot see it.
Wavelength The property of light that decides its color and how much it bends.

Where Rainbows Appear 20

Airplane From one, high above the ground, a rainbow can sometimes be seen as a full circle.
Drizzle Fine, light rain whose drops are generally smaller than half a millimeter across.
East In the early evening, look this way for a rainbow, away from the setting Sun.
Fog Its droplets are so small that the bow they make is almost white.
Fountain The rainbow effect is often seen near one, as it is near a waterfall.
Hawaii Moonbows are found in the wet parts of this island state, such as Kauai.
Horizon The line where land meets sky; from the ground, half or more of a rainbow's circle lies below it.
Hose Spraying a mist of water from a garden one, with your back to the Sun, can make a rainbow.
Lake Sunlight bouncing off a large, calm one before it reaches the rain can make a rare second bow.
Mist Very small drops of water floating in cool air; a rainbow can form in it as well as in rain.
Niagara Moonbows may be seen in the spray of these famous falls in New York.
Puddle A reflected rainbow can often be seen, at least in part, even in a small one.
Rain Water falling from clouds in drops; with the Sun behind you, it can show you a bow of colors.
Seawater A bow in its spray is a little smaller than a true rainbow, because it bends light more than rain does.
Sky A rainbow made by sunlight always appears in the part of this directly opposite the Sun.
Sleet Falling ice pellets; light passing through them can make a rare bow.
Spray Fine drops thrown up by a waterfall, the sea or a garden hose; rainbows often appear in it.
Taiwan The longest-lasting rainbow on record shone over a mountain range here for almost nine hours in 2017.
West The part of the sky where a rainbow is usually seen in the morning.
Yosemite Moonbows may be seen at the waterfalls of this national park in California.

Kinds of Rainbows 18

Alexander The dark band of sky between the two bows of a double rainbow is named after this ancient scholar.
Arc A part of a circle; the shape a rainbow shows from the ground.
Circle The full shape of every rainbow, though from the ground only the upper part can usually be seen.
Double A rainbow with a second, fainter bow outside the first.
Faint Dim and hard to see, as the outer bow always is beside the main one.
Fogbow A broad, almost white bow made by the very small droplets of fog.
Glory Small colored rings around the shadow of an observer's head on mist or cloud.
Ice Halos and sun dogs are made by crystals of this, not by drops of liquid water.
Lunar Of the Moon; a rainbow of this kind is made by moonlight.
Moonbow A rainbow made by moonlight; to human eyes it often appears white.
Primary The name for the main bow, made by light that bounces once inside each drop.
Rainbow An arc of colors in the sky, made when sunlight is bent and bounced back inside drops of water.
Reflected A rainbow seen in the surface of water below the horizon.
Secondary The fainter outer bow of a double rainbow, made when light bounces twice inside each drop.
Sundog A patch of light to the left or right of the Sun; it is a kind of halo, not a rainbow.
Supernumerary A faint extra band of pink, purple or green just inside a bright rainbow.
Tertiary The third bow, on the Sun's side of the sky and lost in its glare; it was first photographed in 2011.
Twinned A very rare rainbow whose two arcs split from a single base.

Rainbow Science and Stories 15

Aristotle The ancient Greek scholar who was first to give serious attention to the rainbow.
Bifrost In Norse myth, the rainbow bridge that joins the world of people to the home of the gods.
Camera It needs a wide-angle lens to fit the whole half circle of a rainbow into one picture.
Descartes The French thinker who studied the bow in 1637 by passing light through a large glass ball of water.
Experiment A test that a scientist sets up to find out how something works.
Flask A round glass one filled with water has served as a model raindrop in experiments since the 1300s.
Gold In Irish folklore a leprechaun hides a pot of it at the end of the rainbow.
Iris In Greek myth, the goddess who is the rainbow in the form of a person.
Messenger The job of Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow, among the gods.
Mnemonic A trick for remembering, such as a sentence whose words start with the letters of the colors.
Newton The English scientist who used a glass prism to show that white light is made of all the colors.
Norse The old myths of this northern people tell of a bridge named Bifrost.
Saturn Scientists have suggested that Titan, a moon of this planet, might have rainbows made by methane rain.
Theodoric A scholar of Freiberg with this name explained both bows of a double rainbow correctly in 1307.
York "Richard of ___ Gave Battle in Vain" is a sentence for remembering the seven colors.

How this list was compiled: 91 rainbow words in five lists, from the seven colors to moonbows. Clue facts were checked on October 16, 2026 against English Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/, CC BY-SA 4.0), chiefly its Rainbow article, the National Geographic Society's education page Rainbow and, for Iris, the Theoi Project's page Iris; spellings against English Wiktionary. This site is not affiliated with any of them. Licence: own work

How it works

This rainbow word search printable opens on 16 words: the seven colors from Red to Violet, then Prism, Raindrop, Arc, Mist and Spectrum. The full set is 91 rainbow words in five lists, moonbows and myths included.

Read the full guide

Rainbow puzzles by list: colors, light and sky

Colors of the Rainbow has 17 words, from Red to Violet and on to Roy G. Biv, the name that keeps the seven in order. How a Rainbow Forms has 21 for a light unit, such as Refraction, Reflection and Dispersion. Where Rainbows Appear has 20, from Mist and Puddle to Niagara, whose spray makes moonbows.

Kinds of rainbows and the people who explained them

Kinds of Rainbows has 18 words, among them Double, Moonbow, Fogbow and Supernumerary, a faint extra band inside a bright bow. Rainbow Science and Stories has 15, from Newton and Descartes to Iris, the rainbow goddess of Greek myth.

Easy Rainbow keeps to 35 words of 3 to 5 letters, such as Red, Blue, Arc, Mist and Gold.
Under the puzzle, read the Eyes clue aloud: "Each of your two sees its own rainbow; the brain joins them into one."

Questions and answers

What are the colors of the rainbow in order?

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, with red on the outer edge of the main bow and violet on the inner. The name Roy G. Biv spells the order. Isaac Newton set the list at seven.

How is a rainbow formed?

Sunlight bends as it enters a raindrop, bounces off the back of the drop and bends again on the way out. Each color bends by a different amount, so the white light fans out into a band of colors.

What is a double rainbow?

A second, fainter bow about 10 degrees outside the first, made by light that bounces twice inside each drop. Its colors run in reverse order, with red on the inside.

Is a rainbow really a full circle?

Yes. From the ground the horizon hides the lower part, so only an arc shows. From an airplane, or in the spray of a fountain or waterfall, the whole circle can sometimes be seen.

All 91 words

Colors of the Rainbow 17

How a Rainbow Forms 21

Where Rainbows Appear 20

Kinds of Rainbows 18

Rainbow Science and Stories 15

How it works

Rainbow puzzles by list: colors, light and sky

Kinds of rainbows and the people who explained them

Questions and answers

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